Review: Retro Game Challenge Reheats the 8-Bit ’80s

The only bad part about loving old videogames is the fact that nobody ever makes new old videogames. Until now. In this week’s episode of Game|Life the Video, we celebrate Retro Game Challenge, a new Nintendo DS game that is packed full of false memories.

Retro Game Challenge is composed of several smaller games that feel strangely familiar. You never played Robot Ninja Haggleman or Guadia Quest on your old 8-bit console, but these games sure feel like they belong on the shelf right next to Mario Bros. and Dragon Warrior. The old-school pixel art looks perfect, which belies the fact that the gameplay is even better than the ’80s titles that Retro Game Challenge is parodying, thanks to the fact that these games were created with 20 extra years of design know-how under the belt.

Were Retro Game Challenge simply a collection of retro games that never were, it would be worth playing. But the games serve as backdrops for an overarching plot in which you, the player, have been turned into a child and trapped in the 1980s by the Game Master, Arino.

On the TV show, Arino is tasked with completing real games from the 1980s, often with comic results. In Retro Game Challenge, he sets goals for you to complete in each game, like scoring 200,000 points in a shooter or beating the first boss in a role-playing game.

You don’t have to just sit there and plow your way through the games — you’re given goals to complete, which keeps the experience fresh. With one notable exception (a lengthy RPG), you don’t play any one game for longer than 45 minutes or so before moving on to the next one.

You’ll experience a cool mix of genres. With three platforming games, two racers, two shooters and the aforementioned RPG, Retro Game Challenge delivers an astounding level of versatility. The only game I really disliked is Rally King, a top-down racing game that you actually have to play twice — yes, I understand it’s a joke about special-edition versions of games that just repackage the same old levels, but that doesn’t make it any more fun.

(Irony rating: five stars. Namco Bandai, creator of this game, also published Ridge Racer 2 for PSP, which Wikipedia describes thusly: "It shares the same game engine, user interface and game design as the previous title, and includes almost all of the elements, cars and tracks of its predecessor.")

Little touches really make Retro Game Challenge fun. For instance, on the bottom DS screen, you’re shown sitting in front of a TV with the grade-school version of Arino, who makes all kinds of jokes about the old days of gaming guaranteed to make any child of the ’80s crack a smile. You can thumb through virtual versions of the games’ manuals for help; even better, little Arino will occasionally bring home an issue of GameFan magazine that’s packed with tips and cheat codes for each of the games.

Sad to say, this is where Retro Game Challenge stumbles a bit — the translations are occasionally botched. In two instances, the cheat codes were incorrect. This, plus the fact that some of the challenges send you back over territory you’ve already covered, keeps the game from achieving true retro perfection. It’s still awesome, and a must-play for fans of the NES era.

Image courtesy Xseed Games

WIRED Brand-new old games that feel like classics, clever objective-based gameplay